Universal Joints for the Win

The quest for perfection in Paparazzi cameras: I’ve ordered a bunch of these to support the camera and not allow it to twist. But I’ll need to use my more powerful servos. The journey continues…..

Paparazzi Camera fitted

This is the camera fitted onto the baseboard and projecting from the frame. It works fairly well, but I’ve got a problem with it twisting on its axis and not staying level. Oh well, perhaps a universal joint will provide more stability. The quest continues…

Paparazzi Base board Build

These are all the components mounted on the base board. There are four servos, one for each direction. We could probably get away with two, but I thought I could get a bit more power with four. On the bottom we have the Pico which controls everything. On the right we have a servo controller board and on the top we have a Useful Sensors person detector which tells the PICO where the subject is.

Paparazzi Base Board

This is the design for the base board for the Paparazzi camera. The servos will be mounted between the pillars and the whole thing fits in a small picture frame. It’s coming along nicely.

3D printed Snap Together Fittings

This is how I’m supporting my camera. The shaft on the right has a ball on the top which snaps into a hole in the fitting which will be stuck into the camera. I’ve not made much “push fit” stuff like this with the 3D printer and it works very well, which is nice. There’s a very satisfying “click” when the two parts go together. The shaft will be bolted to the back plate, and I’m going to put wires into the fitting in the camera which will be connected to servos to move the camera around.

Paparazzi Picked

I’ve chosen the “Point and Shoot” camera to use on my paparazzi camera installation. It’s broken because the batter compartment door is missing But it has the advantage of being very lightweight.

Paparazzi Pan and Tilt Fail

I’m trying to make an old point and shoot camera follow you around the room. I need something to move the camera around. My super-powerful servos arrived today. I thought they might do the moving for me. I designed the little pan and tilt mechanism that you can see above. The tray on the left is where you put the camera. There is a servo behind the tray which does the panning, and the servo on the right does the tilting.

Above you can see how it works. You fit the mechanism on a tripod and put the camera on the tray. And it sort of does the job. The servos are powerful enough to support the camera weight and do the panning and tilting thing. But I don’t like the effect. I had this idea of a camera suspended in the air on a picture and moving from there. And the tilt and pan axes are in different planes, so that the camera moves in a curved path when I don’t want it to. Oh well. Back to the drawing board (or in this case OpenSCAD).